We asked you: Is Florida meeting its constitutional duty to provide a quality education?

Friday Back Talk

December 4, 2009

YES: 33%

NO: 67%

Alas, business first, education last

Students lose out in Florida. It is a Republican thing. Billions of dollars of lottery money mean legislators can give big Jeb-style tax cuts, and stiff smaller class size and teachers' salaries. Business first and education last. Ignore the state constitution.

Del Cain

Orlando

Reality of the schools' agenda

I am a graduate of Florida schools. I got a fine education in spite of that fact because my family values knowledge.

Everything I know about underage drinking, drug abuse, teenage pregnancy, homosexual predation and profanity I learned in Florida schools, and I am just talking about the teachers lounge.

... I have lost count of those [kids] who died tragic, untimely deaths from alcohol, drugs, guns and AIDS.

The Florida Constitution needs amending.

AutobahnFlorida (from the Web)

Rescue children from public schools

Florida is meeting its constitutional duty to provide us with some of the biggest idiots that a government-run school system can push out, with all due respect to those abused and dedicated teachers in our audience.

Florida's schools are atrocious. They consistently rank near the bottom in [many] polls ... and do a bang-up job of graduating functional illiterates into our society. Any parent with a brain and the funds to support it should rescue their children from the clutches of Florida's government school system.

In this economy, it is more difficult to do since the teachers unions and special interests killed the voucher programs. Every parent should have the option of taking their children's share of funding and choosing the schools to put them in.

nailman (from the Web)

A personal stake in our education system

The term "quality" is subjective. When parents, employers and students start demanding quality education from their school districts, and community colleges stop offering remedial classes for material that should have been learned in middle and high schools, then maybe ... personal responsibility and accountability will be the tenets of education. [These] instead of profit, greed and politics controlling our educational systems.

...The next time you vote for school-board members, find out what the person's background is. ... Vote for those candidates who will put academics ahead of all considerations....